


But the World is so Much Grander

by TheColorBlue



Series: But the World is So Much Grander [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-29
Updated: 2011-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from a canon AU in my mind; in which Cerebro resembles more real-world tech and less sexy science fiction; in which Sean has family outside of the mutant group, and points this out himself; in which Erik and Charles actually sit down to have conversations about their mutations and science and genetics; and in which the world is truly so much larger than just the few of them, collected together in this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cerebro

**Author's Note:**

> This section is AU in that the described Cerebro looks more like the modern EEG net than the film's design.  
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeg)  
> Having been involved in lab work that utilizes EEG to a great extent...this kind of writing was inevitable for me...

Charles’ eyes were closed. He looked comfortable, the lines of his shoulders and back beautifully relaxed, his hands and arms loose against the armrests. He also looked ridiculous, a net of clear elastics, wires, and small, circular white electrodes fitted close to his scalp and tying snug under his chin, his hair sticking out in little tufts and peaks in-between the openings of the net. Erik felt even more ridiculous, a plastic syringe in one hand filled with a clear, light-blue gel, the other hand lightly maneuring an electrode onto its side. He scrapped the tip of the syringe gently against Charles’ scalp just under one of the electrode caps, squeezed blue gel into the cap, and then set the cap gel-down against Charles’ skin. There were one hundred and twenty-seven electrodes. Each of them needed to be gelled individually for each session, and the skin underneath needed to be gently scratched with both the tip of the plastic syringe, and then a second time with the blunt tip of a needle to minimize electrical impedence.

The net was a prototype “Cerebro.” Hank had explained how the net picked up the electrical signals fired by the brain, then relayed them through wires to a central processing machine that translated those signals into a radio wave, and then amplified and transmitted them through the satellite dish above the building. “We…don’t actually understand brainwaves well enough to be able to tell what all of this means,” Hank had said during the first session, pointing to the sample graph, all peaking and squiggling lines across the long sheet of paper. “But I guess we don’t need to, for this case anyway. Charles will have to relay the information about a mutant’s location verbally, but that shouldn’t be any problem, there’s always going to be a few people around to make sure machines running all right, and also to place the net.”

Hank had shown Raven and Erik how to place the net themselves, figuring it would just be good general knowledge for the two of them to have.

Erik was currently practicing with a model net, working with Charles in one of the empty offices of the military compound. There were large windows letting in the sunlight. Charles hummed a little while Erik worked.

“How does it feel?” Erik asked, working the tip of the syringe against Charles’ scalp.

“Hmmm,” Charles said, without opening his eyes. Then, “Good.”

Erik righted a tipped-over cap. He pushed away wayward strands of Charles’ hair with the syringe. “You make an adorable lab rat,” he remarked.

Charles smiled, breathing in through his nose, and he said, “Don’t spoil this for me, Erik.”

“There’s nothing I can do that would make this image any less ridiculous,” Erik retorted. “If you were imagining some sleek contraption from science fiction when Hank first mentioned this monstrosity, I hope that you were badly disappointed.”

“I wasn’t expecting anything,” Charles said simply. He shifted his weight lightly in his seat. “I’m a genetics professor, you might recall. I may adore going on about our _groovy_ mutations, but I’m no stranger to the realities of science and scientific research.” He opened his eyes at last, tipping his head to look back at Erik. Erik had to lift his hand to avoid making contact with Charles’ scalp. “In any case, I think this is amazing. Truly it is, in its own way.” He was looking at Erik earnestly, his eyes bright, his head wrapped up in that absurd contraption.

His eyes were very blue, and kind.

Erik found that he had difficulty looking into them for too long. He turned his gaze slightly to the side instead and readjusted the electrode by Charles' temple. Then he touched a hand, very gently, to the peaked tuffs of Charles’ hair sticking up through the net.

“It is good, isn’t it,” Erik said, at last, “that Hank said shaving your head may make net placement more difficult, not less. Scalp oils interfering, and skin thickening over time, all of that."

“I like my hair where it is,” Charles agreed, something strangely giddy in his tone, as he looked up at Erik.

Was this truly reality? Erik wondered, feeling a kind of wryness, a kind of disbelief. It seemed too absurd.

When the net was taken off Charles’ head, his hair would be a mess. His face would look like he’d been attacked by an octopus, all of those round marks left behind by the electrodes. After a real session with Cerebro however, Charles’ wouldn’t even mind that kind of attack to his dignity. His eyes would be far away, somewhere else, and full of wonder.

Erik looked down at Charles.

Taking great care not to nudge the electrodes on Charles’ face, Erik placed his hands just against Charles’ armrests, leaned down, and kissed him.


	2. Banshee

Somehow, Erik Lensherr did not expect to find a mutant with a family. After recruiting a young woman from a strip club, a taxi driver, an imprisoned teenager, and after working with Charles and Raven, who were their own kind of people anyway--well, Sean was certainly different compared to the rest, in his own way. Maybe that was ironic. Erik didn't think too hard on it, though, except in so far as that Sean was going to have to toughen up a bit, if he was going to face anything real in life.

Sean Cassidy lived in the suburbs, those kind of neatly lined-up matchbox houses with clipped lawns and children on bicycles and the mailman's truck was turning the corner up ahead when Erik pulled the car into Sean's driveway. Charles was sitting in the front passenger seat. He was half-turned and talking excitedly to the teenager in the back. Sean's posture was terrible, the sort of slightly hunched line of his back and shoulders--but he was leaning forward, the seatbelt a straining line pulled against his upper body, listening to Charles. Sean was excited. Of course he wanted to come with them. He had to let his folks know though. Charles didn't think that was going to be any problem.

Erik watched from the rearview mirror as Sean's eyes narrowed slightly. "You're not going to do anything funny to them, are you?" His voice hadn't changed from its usual low, almost-lisping slur--the voice he used to prevent his sonic abilities from being released--but there was a new kind of tension in the tone.

Charles regarded Sean seriously. "If you are really willing to come with us--I'll give your parents some general reason, a gifted youth program you've qualified for--but, if necessary, I may use my telepathy to bring them round to agreeing. It won't be much, just a mental nudge. This is up to you, though, Sean, and. Well. I want to emphasize how important this could be for you. To come into your gifts, and to do so among people like you--"

"I'm coming," Sean interrupted. His eyes shifted slightly to glance at Erik, who was getting out of the car. "Just. I dunno. Don't do anything you wouldn't do to your own mom and pop, I guess."

Erik opened the door for the young man without touching it, the metal swinging open on its hinges.

"You're among your own kind, now," Erik said. He meant it, saying those words. It was intended as a kindness. But Sean just shook his head, his thick, bright hair swaying with the movement. "Whatever. You know I've only just met you guys, right?"

Sean started towards his front door first, his hands shoved into his pockets, with Charles keeping step, and Erik falling slightly behind.

"Your friend here is really... something," Sean said to Charles. Sean glanced back at Erik, and Erik simply smiled dryly, showing open palms to indicate he was unarmed, really. Charles was laughing, loose and his shoulders shaking lightly with the sound.

"He's not that bad," Charles said. "You'll see."


	3. Conversations

Erik was bending wire into intricate patterns, sitting at one of the stone tables outside, at the back of the estate. Charles sat at the table as well, watching Banshee turn loops in the sky, far off in the distance.

"Physiologically speaking, none of our mutations make even the slightest bit of sense," Charles said.

Erik was attempting some kind of wire sculpture of a horse. The idea was to develop finer, minute coordination of his abilities. The wire rolled out the lines of legs moving out into a gallop, the motion of it pulling through the slope of the neck and the legs. He was modeling off of a photograph, getting the wire to look a bit like the shape of the 2-dimensional image, but also translating it into a 3-dimensional figure. The shape of the horse was suspended in air as the wire unspooled.

“Take Alex, for instance,” Charles went on. “How is it possible that a human body could generate the energy needed for his abilities? Mitochondria at a cellular level are adequate for the daily metabolism of organic substrates into ATP into bodily movement—but that’s nowhere near the energy output necessary for blasting down a mannequin some twenty yards away. Utilizing energy and acquiring it—that’s the question. Or Sean, how his vocal chords could possibly produce sound waves at such high frequencies—it’s incredible. It’s nothing short of miraculous.”

Silver wire shaped eyes and muzzle and throat. The lines moved in and out and around, weaving and interlocking. Charles reached out to touch the sculpted muzzle, then looking past it to address Erik eagerly.

“Or even your abilities, my friend. Neurons do produce a kind of electrical charge with ion gradients, which would in turn produce a magnetic field—but it would hardly be anything worth measuring, and your manipulation of metals is entirely a class of its own.”

“You ought to speak plain English,” Erik said calmly. He set the finished wire sculpture down on the table. Charles’ posture was relaxed, one elbow resting on the table as he handled Erik's work. He was watching Erik curiously. “I get the feeling you never did learn how to talk plain to much of the human race. You just—“ He waggled his fingers in the air, a fair imitation of Charles’ own gesture that meant his mental tricks. There was a trace of a smile slipping into Erik’s face though, mild and cool.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charles huffed. He picked up the horse, giving his hands something to occupy themselves with. “I know how to communicate perfectly well, thank you.”

Charles gently ran his fingers over the lines of the wires. Erik watched the movement.

“Shaw wanted to know how I worked too,” Erik said. “Lab rats and all. Nothing that left permanent physical damage, but. Well.”

Erik thought of experiments on flesh, of pressure and small spaces and being strapped to tables, the light shining in your eyes. Charles flinched slightly as Erik continued to look at the other man, and Erik knew that Charles could taste the flavor of his thoughts.

“Is that what you want?” Erik asked, and already he knew the question was unfair. Charles would never, no matter how much curiosity he showed about mutations. Charles was the sort of person who could not stand pain, and because of that he would never desire to inflict it on others. He'd try to protect everyone around him, as best as he could. Still. It was a pity that Charles’ ideas of what pain meant were so limited.

Charles frowned at Erik. The confusion was clear in the slightly narrowed cast of his eyes. Erik wondered if Charles had been reading his mind--and even if he had, how much of his thoughts Charles would have actually _understood_.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Charles asked. “I don’t—you know I would never do anything to harm a fellow mutant. Never in my life.”

Erik wasn’t looking at Charles anymore, not directly. There seemed to be a point beyond his shoulder, and far away, Erik trying to find that place.

“You ought to learn how to shoot a man,” Erik said at last. “It might save you a great deal of sorrow in the long run.”

Charles shook his head. “I don’t believe that,” He said firmly. “Nothing good could ever come of harming anyone else.”

“And I have no doubt that you’ll learn better someday,” Erik said softly.

He thought about unwinding the wire horse in Charles hands, or collapsing it, allowing the shape to warp and change. It didn’t matter, either way. But Charles was holding the shape of it so gently, and Erik found he couldn’t bring himself to take that moment away.

Perhaps someday.


	4. A Brighter Future

In the interests of discretion, Charles did not hire a cook or housekeeping services to help at the estate while the children were present. They all rotated chores and, on the second evening of their stay, they had a home-cooked meal as a group, everyone sitting around one end of the long dining table, eating tossed salad and bread and slices of chicken breast that Raven and Alex had poured Campbell's cream of mushroom soup over and baked in the oven. They sat around talking about training and aching muscles, and Sean and Alex in particular were stuffing their faces like they were afraid the food would disappear from off their plates if they didn't get it into their mouths first. Neither of them were used to using their abilities for such intensive intervals and on top of that was the pure physical conditioning that Erik and Charles were putting them through, running laps and weight lifting.

"I want to give some lectures on the science of all this--of our mutations." Charles was talking with his elbows on the table and leaning forward to address everyone in his eagerness. "Nothing that would go over your heads, but maybe the theoretical science of how each of our abilities function, and perhaps a bit of the genetics of it as well--all of you need to know these things, why we're here and what we're fighting for and why it matters. Just think--with the way that the world's going, someday, we _will_ have mutants from all walks of life, from non-mutant families like ourselves, but also those whose genes come from a known mutant. It's so important because, one day, they won't be able to ignore us, I really believe this. Mutants will be born in the families of politicians, generals, academics; you might live to see the day where we have mutants who are film stars, popular singers, anything you could possibly imagine."

Erik was cutting his chicken into tiny pieces without touching either his knife or his fork. He was watching Charles instead. "Assuming," he said cooly, "that they haven't locked us all away instead. You really do think too well of humanity, Charles."

Charles shook his head vigorously, "They can't. They won't be able to. The nature of these mutations is that they can appear in any family, regardless of past genetic history. Would all families do that to their children? They won't be able to keep us all locked up, all of us hidden like that."

"They won't have to," a soft voice said from the other side of the table, "Because we've already started to do it to ourselves."

Charles frowned, looking over at Raven. "Raven, I don't even know what you're going on about."

But he couldn't hold her accusing stare. When the silence went on for a beat too long, neither of them speaking, he reached for the wine bottle instead. "Society just needs...time," he said at last. "You'll see. Erik, would you like--"

"I'd like, Professor X," Sean said, leaning over with his glass and nearly tipping over the bread basket.

"Nice try," Charles said, holding the bottle away from the table, away from Sean, trying to keep his tone light despite the accusation and unhappiness he could sense from Raven, even from Erik.

It didn't matter. He believed in a brighter future, absolutely. He couldn't understand this pessimism that Erik, and now even Raven, were starting to direct towards him these days.


	5. Tiger

Raven asked at last, feeling quiet and small, "Could you pass me my robe?"

Erik said, sitting beside her at the edge of the bed, his face cool yet intent, "You don't have to hide. Have you ever looked at a tiger and thought you ought to cover it up?"

Raven looked down at her hands. She let that moment, those words seep in. Then she looked up at Erik, and she made up her mind. "Don't exoticize me, Erik," she said. She was hurt, and she was angry--after Hank's rejection of her natural form, who wouldn't be--but for the first time that evening, she found that the one she wanted to punch was Erik. "I want to be seen as beautiful--what girl doesn't? But I want to be beautiful as _me_ , whatever I look like. Okay, Erik? I'm beautiful because I'm Raven Xavier, not because--not because my blueness makes you think of tigers. Don't exoticize me."

And then she climbed out of bed, naked, and went to get her robe.

She was living in an estate full of idiots.

Erik was watching her as she left. She wasn't sure he completely understood what she had been trying to say, and even as she closed the door to Erik's bedroom behind her, something in her heart ached.


	6. What Some Men Deserve

Erik left Shaw's crumpled body inside the submarine. He climbed through the inner corridor to the opening torn into the side of the vessel. He jumped. It was a strange, soft feeling: letting the earth's magnetic fields catch him, as he gently came down. He looked out to the ocean, sensing the ships, sensing the movement of metal.

\--

"There are thousands of innocent men out there," Charles shouted at him. "Think Erik, Goddamn you--just think that any number of them might be the brother or a father to a mutant, and whether they know it or not--do you honestly believe any child would join you, knowing you had murdered someone they loved?"

When Erik did not move or look away from the sea, Charles pressed, " _Please._ Think of Shaw! Maybe you believe that you share his dream, of being the greater men--but you would have never done it by his side, and _you know why_."

Charle's chest was heaving with the effort of shouting. The sun was high above them, glinting off the shells of metal suspended in the air. Erik's body felt hot, like it was cracking open where the skin was exposed to sky. The helmet was heavy against his head, sweat trickling past his temples. His mind felt strangely empty, strangely hollow. He would have liked to kill every man out there on the ocean that day. He could have smiled with the feeling, and the smile was not from happiness.

"Some men deserve to die," he said.

Charles looked as though some great and terrible weight were pushing down on him, making it difficult for him to speak, or even to breathe the humid air. "Please, Erik."

Erik looked out at the suspended missiles that were now pointed towards the ships. He released them towards their targets. Distantly, he heard Charles give a shout of rage and horror, saw him running across the sand, closing the distance between them.

It was easy to overpower Charles once they hit the sand, to knock the other man a winding blow to the jaw when he kept thrashing and trying to shift their weights so that it was Erik who was pinned down underneath him instead.

Everything felt strange and stiffling and empty. Erik thought of that day, so many years ago, in Shaw's lab, all that metal crumpling and twisting, broken.

He thought of the blood on Shaw's coin.

There was blood trickling from the corner of Charles mouth. Erik looked down at it, looked at blue eyes that were dazed, disoriented from a second blow. Erik wouldn't allow Charles to physically overpower him on the beach. Not for a minute.

But far off over the ocean, the missiles were allowed to crash into the sea.


End file.
